to think that, despite being a full time working mother myself..

[Catnao]

..and knowing that it is hard to get time off work, I do not want to teach children who come in to school white as a sheet and who start puking by 9.30. Having caught rotavirus and been off for a week last week,most of which was spent moaning and wishing ANYTHING could stop the pain and indignity, I DO NOT want to go through that again.

that book sounds interesting, animula The Siege..
Have you read Antony Beevor's Stalingrad? stunning book

it is depressing this attitude, my work is not great on a lot of things but is okay about nursing sick kids, not a big thing and i can work from home quite a bit and do so..
bad folks get shit for this..

these kids must never have time to recover from illness properly, some take longer than others, it's sad

Where I work, you can't return to work until 48hrs have passed and rightly so. YADNBU.

Animula - It is sad. But then I hate this whole 'go to work even if you're dying culture'. If you've got something higly infectious, which D&V is, it is much better for everyone to take time off to recover and beome infection free.

I'm glad it's not just me! I do think you almost have to go unless you are dying - but last week - i thought I was!! Was annoyed about comments in playground about "supply teacher - well, where WAS she??"

Actually Rotavirus is airborne. It can survive for weeks in water and for up to four hours on human skin. It can also survive on surfaces, toys and clothing.
So very easy to spread/catch.
Have had it once myself and thought I was dying, actually would have loved for someone to put me out of my misery.
I freaking hate the martyrs who drag their bugs and germs in to the workplace and think we should all applaud their braveness, as the bug flies around mutating.

F/T working mum here. Children never sent when ill providing I'm sure they are ill (there has been the odd day when I have thought they are malingering). On the whole, I would rather they stay put than risk the emergency call and being pulled out of a meeting to shlep back to collect them. When they were smaller always managed - DH/I juggled with who had a meeting BUT we did have an au-pair.

OTH have also been a bit shocked when I have received the call - and been told there's nothing much wrong but I need to collect. On one occasion ds had a broken ankle (but wouldn't cry in front teachers) and on another the nurse thought he was putting on earache because he was tired. His eardrum perforated during the course of the evening.

Re the sending them in with d & v though - how do parents manage it - both mine refuse point blank to use the school lavatories for a poo. Not clean enough, not enough privacy.

Well my 13 month old has had a fever all night and is crying. No sleep for either of us as he has a temp of 38.5 and it is not coming down.

He has just had a first few days back at nursery after I had kept him with me for 2 weeks to get over a nasty virus he had. So pissed off but I can understand the issues working mums have.

They vaccinate against rotavirus at 6 wks in Hong Kong because pretty much all children were contracting it at least once by age 5.

i didn't think it was airborne - just survived really well on hard and soft surfaces so easy to transmit - as in hand to mouth. yes it can survive in water but only through faecal matter getting into the water.

having it at nursery was a real cause for concern because it meant their hygene barriers/systems had clearly broken down. either the nappy area wasn't being cleaned down properly between changes or staff weren't cleaning well enough between children iyswim. nurseries can be closed to examine where the failing is if they have an outbreak.

I agree that it is shocking that parents send children to school when they know they are ill. What we need is a case that such a parent gets sued by somebody (child or teacher) who ends up seriously ill as a result.

I find some people's attitudes towards others utterly unacceptable. I overheard one mum at dd's school (she is a health visitor by the way) telling another mum that her dd had been vomitting all night but that she had to visit new mothers today so she could not keep her home .... Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Low and behold, dd told me that this girl started vomitting her guts out all over the toys mid-morning. Shame shame on these parents. Teachers were left to clear it all up.

Not long ago I spend half a day sitting with a sick child as it took the parents three hours to collect him (after the various threads here I have decided never to offer to do something like that again, if they cannot look after their own kids sod them).

I think the fact that some employers are difficult with women taking time off to look after sick child is neither here nor there, it is for the parents to sort out, if they cannot they should make other arrangements.

'I think it's crap that the workplace is so fucking un-family, un-women friendly in the C21. It's so depressing that this was the version of the future we ended up with: parents working stupid hours, unable to take time off, childless and en-childed pitted against each other, in a spin if a child is ill .... and so much more.'

great post Animula.

It is, and IME, the worst culprits for being totally unreasonable on this front are female bosses. My last two (curse them) were really bad for this. We had one colleague who had two young daughters; both she and her partner worked (because they had to - he had just got back into work after an extensive redundancy). Her one daughter was ill (but would mostly be sleeping). She asked if she could work from home (as we were set up to do this). No way, absolutely no way - she had to either come in or take a day's leave. But these women were insane. One spent THREE HOURS trying to drive in in heavy snow (without chains on tires or anything) to get into work, to prove a point that SHE got in, so everyone (apart from her favourite) had to go in. Both had househusbands, so somewhere along the way forgot that other people did not necessarily have someone else at home to take over when things went belly up.

I totally agree with the OP.

We do, however, get lots of letters from the school about shitty attendance, and when DS1 had a full week off last week with a chest infection (he's asthmatic) I dreaded phonong because I thought theat they were getting frustrated that we were keeping him off. I went into school to talk to his teacher, who reassured me that it's better to keep him off if he's ill at all.

Teachers are bloody brilliant. :)

AbsofCroissant - I don't like the generalisation of female bosses. I found that two of the male bosses where I worked were not sympathetic, and used to moan about people that needed time off for their kids, both had SAHM's to look after any childcare emergency, however I know that I can not generalise either way.

The staff that I was manager for were always able to leave at short notice for any genuine emergency, such as child care - and this was always paid and I know the staff made it up in some way or another.

I believe that such an attitude meant that I knew what was going on. I did not have to deal with unexplained absences. The work got done. I should add that this also applied before I had children, just because I did not have children or any responsibility for them did not mean that I could not figure out that having someone take their annual leave all the time for the odd absence was pointless and would cause resentment. As a department we got great results and I could afford to pay my staff, as I always felt they worked to make up the time, and as Head of Department it was my discretion to allow paid time off for emergencies. I would be equally flexible with the staff who did not have children - as this would stop staff being pitted against each other or claiming favouritism. Also what would be the point of making someone take unpaid leave, or making them come in when they would obviously be miserable with worry for their child?

I have never ever had a day off work (strangely never sick when I was working and I loved my job) and probably am the loon that would walk to work in the snow to get in, but I would not be in if I was seriously sick and did not expect the same attendance of others.

That said I am pretty pissed off that I was up all night with my baby because of someone probably not taking care of their baby and keeping them off. Maybe they have an awful boss.

Pretty pissed off about the vomiting virus too, as I sure he got it from nursery.

That's why I said "IME". I wasn't saying all female bosses are power hungry, insane, unsympathetic lunatics, just that those two were, IME.

My experience is that the worst bosses are either the childless without caring responsibilities, who simply haven't got a clue, or the People With Stay At Home Partners, of either sex.
I have known quite a few childless women who 'get it' because they have been the one to look after a parent with Alzheimer's etc.

I (working mum) divide up stay at home with sick children responsibilities between me, my husband and my mum (who is brilliant as will do an emergency pick-up as well). My husband is not a shirker for asking to stay home if the children are sick. We don't keep them home for sniffle, but for bad chests, aches/earache/flu type things, and definitely for vomiting. I cannot understand anyone who send a D and V child in at all, they feel so rotten I would feel guilty as hell and worry about them all day. Then, we are both in jobs where either we can work from home or although inconvenient and undesirable, our bosses are unlikely to want to lose us over a couple of days here and there. I feel sorry for women who are on their own or have husband who are not prepared to shoulder the inevitable burden of sick children, but then my husband was the first to take paternity leave in his dep't a few years ago, so he's quite prepared to push this particular issue at his work.

ok point taken that is was just your experience croissant.

Well perhaps teachers could help this situation by not rewarding 100% attendance.

snowplough - perhaps you could change that to "schools could help..." rather than "teachers could help..." - it's not the teachers who make the policies up.

I teach at a school where staff absence is a problem - 75% of us are in all the time, and don't take the piss, but minority are dreadful (one colleague walked out of a Yr 10 lesson today as she "had to go home right now" with a sore throat) However, one of the blanket policies our HT has made in response is to only allow 2 paid days per year with sick children - the rest has to be unpaid leave. I get that she needs to tackle staff absence, but think this is vastly unfair - particularly to single parents on the staff.

YANBU, and pity the poor kid who gets sent in when ill - what a message - 'your feelings aren't important enough to be considered'. Completely understand being a working parent - but surely reasonable that dad's take turns in taking the time off - have had many negotiations over the years about this with DH as to whose meeting is the more important - the other stays home.

I kept my 6 year old home today as she has a streaiming cold and chesty cough. Main thing was she was awake a lot of the night coughing and so was a tearful snotty coughing mess this morning. By the time i would have dragged her through the snow to school she would have been in a right state so it didn't feel fair to inflict that on any teacher! Heres hoping shes better tomorrow because today has not been fun with a tired, coughing and snotty 6 year old plus the three younger ones all stuck inside while I am trying to make possibly the most boring spreadsheet known to man... I have a headache.

Employment law gives you the right to take unpaid time off for unexpected kids' illnesses.The trouble is the more we juggle and try to find other solutions the harder it gets for people to satnd up for their rights and say to teh boss I'm not coming in today because my child is ill.

kids can become ill very suddenly so OP is perhaps being a little U.

I would never send a child with D&V to school but was rather annoyed to have to collect DS from school at 9.30 am one day because the teacher had asked him if he had been sick at home (leading question) as he had had a cold. he certainly did not have a vomiting bug but had a cough and had brought up some phlegm the night before which he thought was being sick. he was well enough for school but they were not having any of it though.

I picked him up from school within 30 minutes (having done a 40 mile round trip for nothing) but I was not pleased at him missing a day of school for no reason - and now he knows that to get a free day off all he has to do is claim he has been sick at home.

snowplough makes an excellent point.

Rewarding 100% attendance has a huge impact on whether or not parents send in ill children- the children often don't want to miss the end of term treat.

However, not all teachers agree with the policy. I certainly don't. This is one of the reasons why.

I only agree with the 100% attendance thing if it takes into account unauthorised absence only.